I need my space!

[HCHTech]

I've got an 25-employee architect with a 3-yr-old server, (Server 2012 R2). They are running out of storage space. Currently, they have:

Server C: drive = 2TB RAID5 volume - 200GB Free (OS + some archive files put here when other drives ran out of space)
Server D: drive = 2TB RAID10 volume - 86GB Free (500GB Exchange + active client files)
NAS = 4TB RAID10 - 800GB Free (archive files newer than 2012)
Various external drives for older archives, duplicated with copies in the office and in the owner's home. Tested every 6 months (they have a spreadsheet to track this).

At the rate they are creating data, they will be out of space by Christmas. Cloud backup / storage is pretty much off the table. We could:

A) replace the 2TB RAID10 volume in the server with a 4TB/6TB/8TB RAID10, depending on how much they can spend on drives. This would be tough as we really can't take down their server long enough to do the work.

B) replace the drives in the NAS with 4Tb/6TB/8TB drives. It's a Synology, so I think we could do this one drive at a time without taking it down, although performance would be degraded.

C) add a 2nd NAS, at whatever capacity they are willing to pay for.

I'm concerned that this is getting out of control and very difficult to keep organized.

Of course backup is an issue already. They are violently against cloud storage, so we're using external drives. They have a partner who is very computer savvy and he religiously takes drives back and forth to his house in padded lockboxes. Now, let's add another 4/6/8TB to the backup footprint. Yikes.

When it is time for a new server, we will definitely talk about offsite replication - I have a customer now using the Dell Appasure product that replicates to a duplicate server in the owner's home - it's pretty slick.

But for now - how would you handle adding more storage to this mess?

 

[fencepost]

I'd probably see about getting a temporary drive of 4TB+, connecting it via the SATAIII on the motherboard, boot from USB and image the RAID10 volume to the temp drive, pull the RAID10 drives, replace with larger drives and configure (hopefully it's hardware RAID), boot again from the USB and restore the image onto the new RAID10 volume, then extend the volume within Windows. The nice thing about doing it this way is that you're never deleting anything - the worst case is plugging the current drives back in, not even restoring from a backup.

Not sure if you could do the same thing with the boot volume (are there still size limitations there?) but even if you can I wouldn't recommend it - I'd just clean up the stuff that doesn't belong there anyway. 2TB RAID5 with actual data on it makes me twitchy anyway, I'd much rather see RAID6.

Assuming the RAID10 is only 4 drives it's all 1TB (SAS?), you should be able to jump to 2TB SAS drives not too expensively. I think your main choices will be Seagate or HGST (WD), WD doesn't seem to do SAS drives under their own branding. Understand whether you want Advanced Format or not, that might end up very important for compatibility depending on what exactly you have running. Looking things up, the HGST 2TB 512n drives (HUS726020ALS211) look to be under $170 at Provantage, though for the 4TB ones they only have them in boxes of 20 so you'd need to go elsewhere for that.

Edit: I missed the "Can't take the server down for long enough" but is that a "during business hours" thing (and what would you charge to do it at night instead) or a "This architect is also hosting files required for patient care at a local hospital" thing? If they want to do it with no downtime, easy - buy a new server with more storage space, add it to the domain, set up DFS and migrate, get them connecting to DFS instead, and switch where DFS is using as the primary source for data. If they don't want to spend that kind of money, perhaps they can manage to be down for a few hours overnight or on a weekend after all.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

What is the hardware on the server? Hot swap drive bays? A proper server grade RAID controller that can do online expansion?